CMP – Coming Soon & Maintenance Plugin by NiteoThemes <= 4.1.16 - Missing Authorization to Authenticated (Administrator+) Arbitrary File Upload and Remote Code Execution

Summary

The CMP – Coming Soon & Maintenance Plugin by NiteoThemes plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to arbitrary file upload and remote code execution in all versions up to, and including, 4.1.16 via the `cmp_theme_update_install` AJAX action. This is due to the function only checking for the `publish_pages` capability (available to Editors and above) instead of `manage_options` (Administrators only), combined with a lack of proper validation on the user-supplied file URL and no verification of the downloaded file's content before extraction. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with Administrator-level access and above, to force the server to download and extract a malicious ZIP file from a remote attacker-controlled URL into a web-accessible directory (`wp-content/plugins/cmp-premium-themes/`), resulting in remote code execution. Due to the lack of a nonce for Editors, they are unable to exploit this vulnerability.

Timeline

1. Apr 18, 2026, 3:37 AM UTCCVE published
2. Apr 20, 2026, 1:39 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total

3. Apr 20, 2026, 1:46 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• niteo CMP – Coming Soon & Maintenance Plugin by NiteoThemes

  through 4.1.16

References 5